“—and I want you to have a couple of days when you don’t have to think about . . .” North trailed off, and Shaw could see in his face the hesitation.

“About Matty.”

“About any of it,” North said softly.

“But I want to do goat yoga.”

“No. Absolutely not. I’m putting my foot down.”

Shaw studied his friend’s face; over the last few weeks, the bruises and cuts and swelling had ebbed and vanished, and for the first time since North had married Tucker, North looked like North, the North that Shaw remembered from college.

“You’re not going to be able to let it go,” Shaw said. “You’re just going to keep thinking about it and thinking about it until you either climb out the window and try to find them yourself or you go crazy.”

“I’ll be ok.”

“Maybe I want to spend my vacation looking for baby goats.”

“They’re called kids.”

“Oh. I forgot: you’re the one who graduated college.”

“If things get dangerous, if it even looks remotely possible that this is something serious, we’re done. I’ll be the one who decides. I’m the one who calls it. And if I say we’re done, we’re done.”

Shaw batted his lashes. “Remotely possible. Oh, Jesus. I just want to swoon when I hear a college man talk.”

“Then maybe you should have finished your classes instead of doing a two-semester independent study on the effects of Turkish hash.”

“It was a very rigorous independent study.”

North rolled his eyes again.

Shaw jogged the rest of the way to the barn, where the sobbing woman was drying her eyes with the hem of her skirt, exposing two hairy shanks to the late spring air.

“Excuse me,” Shaw said. “Miss?”

“Sister,” she said through another choked sob. “Sister Hecate Moonbow-Rising of the Lebanon coven.” Another tremor shook her, but when she wiped her eyes this time, they stayed dry longer. “And not the Lebanon, Illinois coven, who are about the most stuck-up bitches you can imagine. You can’t say that word, by the way. It’s too patriarchally oppressive from a man.”

North’s eyes got very round. Very innocent. He met Shaw’s look and mouthed Moonbow.

“Sister Hecate,” Shaw tried again.

Blowing her nose with several loud, honking bursts, the woman shook her head again. “Sister Hecate Moonbow-Rising.”

“Right. Sister Hecate Moonbow-Rising, can you tell us what happened?”

She clutched the hem of her skirt, sniffled, and said, “I don’t know what you can do about it. They’re already gone.”

“We’re detectives. We might be able to do something.”

“Police?”

“Not exactly.”

“I really don’t know. We’ve tried to create a non-hierarchical organization, a circle of goddesses, you understand, and I really fear I’d be undermining—”

“Yelp,” North said.

“Did I step on your foot?” Shaw said.